Published: 14/03/24

We have been working with Scottish Government and NHS colleagues on trying to capture Pharmacy First Plus prescribing, advice and referrals data to better evidence the great work being done out in the network – at the moment, this cannot be separated out from standard Pharmacy First activity.

Ideally, what we want for the independent prescribers in the network is an electronic prescribing and note-taking/transferring solution – which we continue to lobby for at every opportunity. This would support workflow and solve our issues of not being able to identify activity that is specifically linked to an IP consultation. As we do not have a commitment for this to be delivered, the Universal Claim Framework (UCF) system was being looked at to capture this activity data in more detail. Throughout this exercise, we had agreed with SG and NHS colleagues a principle of, at the least, not causing any additional workload for those already under pressure delivering the service. Our recent engagement evening (Thanks to everyone who came along for contributing!) raised several issues that highlighted that the proposed  UCF solution, in its current form, would in fact for some be additional work and could also affect how records are displayed in pharmacy. There were also some points made around claiming which we have taken away to look at with our partners. 

We have listened to all of this feedback and concluded that the right thing to do at this point is to postpone the launch of the new UCF module, which we have asked SG to do and they have agreed. 

We still need to capture these consultations that so much effort is being put into, so we will re-engage with SG, NHS colleagues and, crucially, IP pharmacists to look at what needs to change to move forward with this aim.